The branches remember
what the air saluted:
an open cry,
a stone grown legs,
the woody cause
of silence, eyes
that animated coal
and dog alike,
the selfhood of arrivals,
all the farewells of blood,
the peace
found in the quarrel of a milkweed stalk,
the way blossoms and petals kept
taking wing; finally,
they remember the echo
of their own groans
and creaks.
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